Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

Eruption The Untold Story of Mount St Helens For months in early scientists journalists sightseers and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St Helens part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the mile lo

Title: Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

Author: SteveOlson

ISBN: 9780393353587

Page: 133

Format: Paperback

For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700 mile long Cascadia fault Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southFor months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700 mile long Cascadia fault Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State The eruption was one of the largest in human history, deposited ash in eleven U.S states and five Canadian provinces, and caused than one billion dollars in damage It killed fifty seven people, some as far as thirteen miles away from the volcano s summit.Shedding new light on the cataclysm, author Steve Olson interweaves the history and science behind this event with page turning accounts of what happened to those who lived and those who died.Powerful economic and historical forces influenced the fates of those around the volcano that sunny Sunday morning, including the construction of the nation s railroads, the harvest of a continent s vast forests, and the protection of America s treasured public lands The eruption of Mount St Helens revealed how the past is constantly present in the lives of us all At the same time, it transformed volcanic science, the study of environmental resilience, and, ultimately, our perceptions of what it will take to survive on an increasingly dangerous planet.Rich with vivid personal stories of lumber tycoons, loggers, volcanologists, and conservationists, Eruption delivers a spellbinding narrative built from the testimonies of those closest to the disaster, and an epic tale of our fraught relationship with the natural world.

One thought on “Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens”

This book made me hate humanity. It's super depressing. Let me explain.The bulk of the beginning of this book was an explanation of the logging company that owned a good percentage of the land around Mount St. Helens. We got the WHOLE history of it, including how when the Europeans came over to America, they proceeded to strip the forests of the old growth trees almost immediately. Over 2/3s of the trees that America HAD are GONE. So that part made me sick to my stomach, because humans can't see [...]

Summary: This narrative weaves together the science, history, and economic interests surrounding the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, and its subsequent history.I've been a sucker for a volcano story ever since a volcano was a part of the plotline in a comic strip I followed as a kid. Years later, I devoured Simon Winchester's Krakatoa. Mount St. Helens occurred in my lifetime, one more disaster at the end of Jimmy Carter's ill-fated presidency, one marked by darkened skies and spectacular [...]

Having lived through this even in Yakima, Wa, this was a very interesting read. There is a tremendous amount of history at the beginning of the book. It can be quite tedious initially and weighty to go through. But, it helps you to develop a much better understanding of the events leading up to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Anyone who ever lived through this (I was 6 1/2 years old at the time, but remember it very well), this is a must read. But, others will enjoy it too.

Loved this book! I remember when the eruption happened, but this book has filled in the details and given me a bigger picture of events--how it impacted the economy, history, environment, and people of Washington. While some readers may become impatient with Olson's details of the history of the area's logging economy, the information is necessary to explain the reasons why the various people killed and injured in the eruption were there at that time, and it helps to build suspense toward the ch [...]

Heartwrenching. After a not so successful read-through of Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, this was definitely a change for the better. Olson puts you right into the event, alongside many who lost their lives on the fateful day of May 18th, 1980. The most devastating fact in this tragedy is of course how preventable many of these deaths could have been. The government and the local law enforcement failed their citizens in properly securing the area, educating them on the real dangers of vol [...]

a well-written, often riveting account of mount st. helens before, during, and after its famed 1980 reawakening, steve olson's eruption delves into the weeks of uncertainty that preceded and followed the mountain's explosion, framing the monumental event in the context of the timber industry, pacific northwest politics, the history of the forest service, and ongoing conservation efforts. in addition to chronicling the blast, avalanche, flooding, and ashfall that devastated the region and took th [...]

Author Steve Olson set out to tell the story of most of the 57 people who died as a result of the May 18th eruption, and in doing so he incorporates a lot of history. Several had a connection to logging, and Weyerhauser owned land that abutted the prohibited zones, so a history of that company starts off the book. Science, economy, and the politics of 1980 also factor into this comprehensive story.The eruption and aftermath are clearly detailed, along with speculations of the final moments of th [...]

The author did a lot of research for this book - but that research wasn't specifically on Mount St. Helens itself.The book spent an inordinate amount of time and ink on the Weyerhauser logging company, which has an interesting history that does intersect with the history of southwestern Washington but that wasn't exactly the "Untold Story of Mount St. Helens" that I was expecting from the title. Even still, there was a lot to take away and next time I am in Washington, I want to make the trip to [...]

I've always found Mount St. Helens more than a bit fascinating, although I've only taken the time to read a few articles and watch a few television programs about it. Overall, the gist I got was: it was a relatively unexpected eruption (as in the geologists knew SOMETHING was up with the volcano, but the eruption itself caught them off guard), the people who died because of the eruption had been warned away but either insisted upon staying or snuck past the road block (except for Dave Johnson, w [...]

Wow. This book is amazing. It starts a bit slow, we get the whole history of the Weyerhaeuser family & corporation, but this is important to set up why & how decisions were made before, during & after the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens. The way in which the author, Steve Olson, sets up the lives and deaths of the individuals on the mountain is so poignant & respectful and yet -- more thrilling than any thriller you might read. I highly recommend this book & can't wait to check [...]

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson, describes the events surrounding the powerful volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State on May 18, 1980 . Fifty-seven people died as the result of the eruption, either by extreme heat, by falling rocks, drowned in raging rivers, or buried in massive mud slides. Of those known dead, 27 bodies were never found. The eruption laid waste to hundreds of square miles of prime forest, and subsequent land slides and floods dam [...]

This is a familiar style of nonfiction book: take an event, then fan out and research all the people and prior events that surround it. The result of this procedure often feels a bit paint-by-numbers. Here, there's a gulf between stories of survival as static-electrified ash and debris rains down from the sky (exciting) and the founding in Minnesota in the 1890s of what would become an important lumber company (not exciting, even by my standards). What I liked best about this book was its Pacifi [...]

What I think is that Steve Olson wanted to write a book about lumbering in the New World with a focus on the Weyerhaeusers, but a publisher/editor told him it would be too dull. So, he threw in a recount of the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption, perhaps at the suggestion of the publisher/editor, and didn't even much try to connect his two stories. I've read too many similar books in recent years.

Wow, what a fascinating read! Olson covers the events leading up to the eruption on May 18, 1980, as well the people who lived and died on that fateful day. The roles of the scientists, state and local government officials, the Wayerhaeuser Company and the US Forest Service in the disaster are also explored in detail (maybe a bit too much detail in the case of Weyerhaeuser). I highly recommend this book to anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, as well as to anyone who likes well-written non [...]

Caveat viator was the philosophy of our eccentric governor, Dixy Lee Ray, in 1980, and it's one that I find hard to quarrel with. I was about 20 miles from Mt. Rainier on a May Sunday 36 years ago when a State Patrol officer pulled me over and told me that Mount St. Helens had erupted (all the ash moved east; I lived only 140 miles north of the volcano but hadn't turned on a radio or television and didn't know that the wait was over). I turned around and went home.Steve Olson makes it plain that [...]

Fifty-seven people were killed, along with thousands of animals. Although the eruption was predicted, no one expected the volcano’s north side to collapse and allow the initial pyroclastic flow to shoot out sideways.Unfortunately, volcanologist David Johnston was directly in the path of the lateral blast. He was uneasy enough about his position at the Coldwater II monitoring station to send away visitors who had wanted to spend the night of May 17th on the ridge where he and his equipment were [...]

I thought this book was very well written and riveting. I didn't expect it to be so focused on the lumber industry but it was an interesting component to the story that I hadn't really considered--and of course, living in Seattle I enjoyed the local history. The section of the book on the eruption itself was a nail-biter -- I was reading it on a plane and kept exclaiming, "oh no!" which I'm sure my seatmates loved. I liked how this book focused on the people who perished, and their personal reas [...]

This reminded me of Into Thin Air and Dead Wake: educational, exhaustive, and unforgettably unnerving. I admit I knew very little about the Mount St. Helens eruption before starting the book and was shocked by the violence and chaos of it. It feels almost like a historical footnote now—we’ve had plenty more recent natural disasters to focus on, I guess. But it’s startling to read this now: to contemplate the massive implications of a volcano erupting on the US mainland, and wonder at the s [...]

On the day of the famous eruption, I was four years old, and we were visiting my grandparents in southeastern British Columbia for the Canadian Victoria Day long weekend. I ran into the house from playing outside saying that there was some grey snow falling from the sky. None of my family believed me until the news reported that Mount St.Helens had exploded and the ash had travelled all the way to southern British Columbia.Fast forward to summer of 1988 and my family visited Mount St. Helens Nat [...]

ERUPTION: The Untold Story of Mt. St. Helens. (2016). Steve Olson. ***.My wife will never forget our drive to Mt. St. Helens. We were coming up from the Oregon coast, and she offered to drive when we got there. We got about a third of the way up when suddenly we were in the thickest fog I had ever seen. We literally did not know what to do; we couldn’t see our hand in front of our face. Did you stop? Where was the side of the road? Etc. We slowly moved the car to the right until we heard grave [...]

I was finally taking the time to explore Mount St Helens, so it was time to read about it. This was the second book I read. So by the time I read this one, we were almost done with our trip and I knew quite a bit about what happened. But even still, this filled in the blanks and was quite readable. It is written like a straight about disaster novel, which is fair because it kind of was. Complete with backstories of the important characters, primarily the victims and the escapees and the semi-evi [...]

A new book about Mt St. Helen's eruption and a quick and enjoyable read. We were living in Seattle during this event but the book reveals much more about the lead-up as well as the environmental changes this brought about. Interesting the revisit the various characters who played parts.

This book documents the scientific, ecological, political, and financial factors leading up to the volcanic eruption of Mount Saint Helens. It provides personal accounts from people who survived, along with glimpses into the lives of the victims. It also explains the changes that occurred in the aftermath. It sets the record straight that the all victims except one were not violating any laws. To get the full impact, the author provides an extensive history (maybe a bit too extensive) of the log [...]

Quick read, but engaging and shone some light onto stories that I hadn't heard before. I was wary of the beginning gambit, but it tied together pretty well later on. There are a few times where the author's opinion comes through in his description of an event or person, so by the end you'll know where he stands, but it isn't too obtrusive or preachy.

There is nothing so good as a true story about a cataclysmic event and the background involved, and this book is really well written. Olson tells the story of how one of the mountains in the Cascade chain, Mt. St. Helens in Washington state, came alive starting on March 20, 1980. A woman monitoring a seismograph at one of the universities noticed a spike on the chart which was the first 'quake' caused by the volcano. Over the next almost two months, geologists, sightseers, the media and various [...]

This, to me, is exactly what a historical narrative book should be. I should preface by saying natural disaster books are always my favorite to read. There's something so overpowering and awesome to think of how man alternately chooses to grapple against the forces of nature. It's always an ultimate story, or at least should be.Olson captures that flavor perfectly. The only quibble I might have is with the book's title. There's very little in this book I'd consider "untold". Especially 36 years [...]